


King's Gambit

by kay_emm_gee



Series: the kids aren't alright (The 100 tumblr prompts) [62]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, F/M, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 21:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5307455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_emm_gee/pseuds/kay_emm_gee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: AU where either Bellamy or Clarke end up on the drilling table.</p>
<p>Summary: Bellamy didn’t expect Cage to know that the queen is the most important player on the board, on his board. (He never agreed to pay this particular price. No crown is worth it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	King's Gambit

Bellamy’s hand doesn’t shake as he points the gun at Wallace, but he wishes it does. He wishes he could feel sympathy for the man, for a man having to make the best of two awful choices: to save his people, or to keep his humanity.

(He was barely a man when he had to make his choice: shoot the chancellor and save your sister, or throw the gun away and keep your innocence instead.)

(It didn’t feel like a choice, but the ghosts tell him it was, that he always had a choice, and he chose to have blood, the blood of a stranger, on his hands, instead of his sister’s blood, the same blood that flows through his veins.)

So his hand doesn’t shake, and his voice doesn’t waver as he speaks into the radio, threatening Cage with losing someone he loves. Dante sighs, as if weary from this game of choices, one he has been playing for far too long. And he has made his last move, put forth his last pawn; he is ready for the checkmate. Bellamy can see it in his cloudy eyes, so it isn’t a surprise when father tells son to put their people first.

Bellamy isn’t expecting Cage to get sentimental; he is just as good a player of this game as his father. He expects Cage to keep up his charade of noble leader, expects him to allow his father to be lost (one chess piece can be sacrificed to save the whole board). And Cage is that predictable, steel voice telling him  _my people come first._ Whether Cage expects him to actually follow through, pull the trigger, lodge a bullet in the heart of a man who he has been himself (above or below, the ground has no sympathy for innocence), Bellamy doesn’t know, but he does it anyways.

_Click, bang, groan, thud,_ and the mountain king falls.

(Another win for the rebel king.)

(The ground gives.)

(He doesn’t want the new crown that it is offering him.)

The next moments pass in colors.

The red-rimmed white of Cage’s eyes. The grey of the control room walls. The flashing green and blue of the buttons at Monty’s fingertips. The smear of black and cream that is his sister, running down the halls after Maya. The flash, thrash of blonde across the security screen.

Blonde. Blonde yanked controlling by dirty fingers, blonde falling over the edge of the surgical table, blonde framing an angry face but terrified blue eyes.

He didn’t expect Cage to know this, that family isn’t only defined by blood, to know that Bellamy plays the game differently than him. Love of one trumps love of many in his playbook, and Cage  _knows_  it.

He didn’t expect him to know that the queen is the most important player on the board, on Bellamy’s board.

(Another loss for the boy, brother, son, friend from the Ark.)

(The ground takes.)

(He never agreed to pay this particular price. No crown is worth it.)

Monty says the scrubbers aren’t ready though, and Bellamy doesn’t say that he isn’t ready to pull the level, to drop the guillotine on hundreds of maybe-innocent lives, not yet. The drill is ready through, and so is the knife that rips open Clarke’s pant leg, and so is the hand that guides the bit down to her thigh.

Clarke is not ready to scream though, biting down on her lip so hard that Bellamy knows it has to be drawing blood. Her skin pulls so tight over her clenched knuckles that he expects the bones to tear right through, popping out as the drill tip is gouging into her skin, her muscle, her bone.

The pain wins eventually though, and she screams and screams, choking, angry, uncontrollable, reluctant cries. The agonizing sound burrows under his skin like glass splinters, digging in deeper every time the drill sinks a little bit further into her flesh. When she gasps ragged breaths in between the shouts, which are getting weaker as more of her blood spills to the ground, his own limbs go numb, and he looks to Monty, who nods, finally.

Her screams force his deadened hand onto the lever, but it is his sister’s prostrate figure, subdued by men in tan, that make him pull it, because his sister, his responsibility.

He pulls it for Octavia, keeps his eyes on her as Clarke’s whimpers echo in his ears, feeling the weight of a king’s crown as he tries to save his queen and his knight, because they are trying to save their bishops and their pawns, not willing to give up a single piece to win this cruel game.

So for them he takes out the whole board, smashing and crushing every opposing piece beneath his boot, taking the air from their lungs with one pull of his tired hand. That is his weight to bear, and he will bear it gladly, for the two of them, for all of them.

_Long live the rebel king._

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr (kay-emm-gee)!


End file.
